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Review Summary

Slow-paced but endowed with understanding, characters of some depth and complexity, and good direction, this slice-of-drama by Keisuke Kinoshita is taken from a bitter confection. The tale begins when Sadako (Hideko Takamine) finds that she will not be able to marry the man she loves after all. The son of one of the town's biggest landowners, partially physically disabled from the war, decides that Sadako is the woman he wants to marry. Given his position and the fact that her father is a lowly peasant, she has little choice. But what little she has, she decides to take it when the man she loves returns and they come to the conclusion that they should run off together. Even then, Sadako's future is far from certain. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi